Medical Alumni Association of the University of Maryland

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Pinn Highlights Speakers at Diversity Dinner
vivian W. Pinn, MD, a graduate of the University of virginia School of Medicine
and until retirement in 2011 served as the first full-time director of the office of
research on women’s health at the National Institutes of Health, was the keynote
speaker at the fifth annual Celebrating Diversity Dinner on February 4. More than
200 alumni, faculty, and students attended the event at the Baltimore Marriott Inner
Harbor at Camden yards. Proceeds benefit the Dean Emeritus Donald E. Wilson
Endowed Scholarship Fund. Pinn was the only woman and only minority in her
graduating class in 1967, and she went on to hold faculty appointments in pathology
at Howard University College of Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine,
and Harvard Medical School.
Grant Supports Careers in
Primary Care
WITH PRIMARy CARE expected to play a key
role in national health care reform, Maryland will be
using a five-year, $877,000 grant from the federal health
resources and services administration to develop a program
aimed at increasing the number of medical students
who choose primary care specialties.
“Primary care and preventive health measures are the
foundation of any health care system. However, primary
care specialties, including family medicine, pediatrics,
and internal medicine, face a shortage of physicians as,
over the last decade, general interest in primary care has
drastically decreased,” explains Richard Colgan, MD,
lead investigator on the grant and associate professor in
the department of family & community medicine.
A multidisciplinary team featuring faculty from family
medicine, pediatrics, and internal medicine will create a
special primary care track (PCT), an ambitious academic
program that will allow students to gain hands-on
experience throughout their four years of medical school.
First-year students will be connected with primary
care physicians in urban as well as rural communities,
fostering an opportunity for mentoring across all years
of medical school and the opportunity to see the various
medical challenges in different communities.
“Our goal is to get students excited about primary
care early in their careers. We were fortunate to have
mentors while in medical school to help guide us into
our current specialties. We hope that this grant will
provide a robust clinical experience for students to help
them understand what primary care is all about,” says
co-investigator Nikkita Southall, ’02, assistant professor
in the department of medicine.
Medicine Bulletin Spring 2012 [4 ]
Diversity Dinner keynote speaker Vivian W. Pinn, MD
Co-investigators Nikkita Southhall, ’02, Richard Colgan, MD, and Linda Lewin, MD
The PCT builds on a previous family medicine initiative,
allowing medical students to work alongside a family
physician in their first two years of medical school. In
2010, when the first group of students graduated, nearly
three out of four chose to pursue a primary care specialty,
nearly twice the national average.
In 2011, about 40 percent of Maryland graduates
chose a primary care-related residency. However, a
substantial number of those physicians will ultimately
choose to pursue sub-specialty training and will not
practice primary care.